


Elaborate fantasy

by Shadowmun



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27006436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowmun/pseuds/Shadowmun
Summary: Very short meditation within a needlecast
Relationships: Quellcrist Falconer | Nadia Makita/Takeshi Kovacs
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Elaborate fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> Non-native, non betaread,  
> constructive critiscism explicitely wanted.

The more often I needlecast, the more I am aware of it… the process takes mere moments in reality, but once you are used to it, you can feel every single one of them… stretched out, slowly pulling you onward like a much too weak rubber band. And in between the end points… small eternities.

When I started to become aware of them, I was fascinated. Now, I am just bored. Slowly, ever so slowly, I creep on, until I arrive… at another world, with another small hope, futile as it is. I may find her. Quellcrist Falconer. May finally realize, where she was hidden, free her, like she freed me.

Boredom becomes desperation becomes emptiness in need to be filled.

So, I fill it. With the things that matter. Her. Time with her. I dream.

Quell… Quell… Are you here? She is there, she embraces me, she remembers, she… remembers. We are… yes… what are we? Unbelieving she touches my cheek. “Tak…”

The way, she speaks my name… Warm, full of love, understanding… Forgiving. “I am sorry… I am sorry… It took me so long, I am sorry, we lost, you died… I am sorry…”

She cuts through the stream of my unresolved guilt, with just a wave of her hand. “It’s okay, Tak, it’s okay.” She kisses me, hot, intense… this is how I know she is not just me, imagining her. She is real. She must be… My self-loathing imagined talks with her, could never interrupt my guilt. Quell… real… touching… living. There…

I feel the pull of the needlecast… Almost there…. It snaps me out of my dream, my fantasy, brings me back to myself, my sadness, my being lost, my god-damn fucking guilt. She is still there, I can still feel her, but it is just a dream. I can tell… Everyone, spun up and down again and again, can. Sooner or later, the figment pops, the dream dissolves, the thread is pulled, the fabric destroyed. Everything is still there, still true, but it isn’t real. Or is it? Is it real for those, who never switched sleeve? Is it… heaven? Is it… hell? Did we… is the pure realization, that we are spun down, that we are not real, what makes us realize, this isn’t either?

Ironically, it looks, like the neo-catholics were right in the end… Spinning up costs you heaven, because you can tell… You can tell and they… can’t.


End file.
